macdonald

While I would have liked more time to work on my project, I am satisfied with what I was able to discover about the memorial and create for a project. Since there was virtually no information on the web on this topic I think it was very important to get this information out there. I am happy with the amount of information my website provides on the Adams Family Memorial and Adams family. My two main arguments are the Adams family memorial should be located in the reserved area of the National Mall and that Samuel Adams should also be memorialized. I think it is important to research something that interests you and I feel very strongly about this memorial. Thus, I am glad I researched this topic and would not have changed it.

One of the biggest issues was not related to technology, but the lack of information on the Adams Family Memorial. The Adams Memorial Foundation has a website contains only contact information for the time being. So finding out exactly what was happening with the memorial was not easy. I spoke with the Adams Memorial Foundation and learned that they are in the early stages of the entire project; still trying to secure a location for the memorial. I also got the sense that they are purposefully keeping a rather low profile for now, not sure why? So there was not a whole lot to report on; however, at the same time that was better than having nothing on the project. It is interesting how for about six months there was a good amount of buzz around the project and after it was signed into law in November 2001 the buzz died. So I think the website is an important addition. The lack of information on the actual memorial also forced me to consider other parts to the website: section on Quincy, MA and the Adams family. I think both these do tie in with the rest of the website and help add to presenting the historical significance of the Adams family and the memorial. Read the rest of this entry »

Adams Memorial

 http://eagle1.american.edu/~cm4218a/AdamsMemorial/index.html

Pepy’s Diary is an interesting concept: a daily blog containing a transcription of Samuel Pepy’s 17^th century diary. The idea of posting each entry on the same day is very unique, for example the diary entry for April 3, 1663 posting was posted on April 3, 2006. A real strength of the website is it provides excellent background information on the project. At first, I was slightly confused as to what was going on with the blog. However, the “about this site” and “the story so far” were helpful in explaining the website. However, I still wonder why the website chose the format it did? And if this is the best format possible? Pepy’s Diary directs the visitor to Project Gutenburg, which has diary entries from 1660 to 1669. So why is posting a diary on the corresponding day hundreds of years later even necessary? Obviously, the website does provide much more than just the diary entries, but I am still curious as to why the creators chose this format.

History Blogoshpere is a great index of various history blogs. However, it took me a while to actually figure out what the purpose of the website was. There is no introduction or any page about the website. After exploring around on http://clioweb.org it made more sense to me. The categorizing and brief descriptions of the blogs are especially helpful. However, I still have several questions about the website and blogs. What criteria were used for selecting the blogs included on the website?

I was amazed by the amount of information and the easy access that the History Carnival provides. There is only one thing I did not like about the website, there is no search tool. At least I did not see one on the website. Ideally, one would read each new chapter as it comes out on the 1^st or 15^th of the month. So you would be up to date on the previous issues. Even if you had read the previous issues, what if you want to back and find one thing? How would you come across it again, other than by memory or notes? It just seems that since there is so much information in these issues that might be difficult to do?

I added to the account of one of my favorite patriots, George Robert Twelves Hewes to wikipedia. The subject of Alfred Young’s The Shoemaker and the Tea Party. I added a little bit about his early life and also the key events he was involved with during the revolutionary Boston and the American revolution.

This week’s reading definitely provided a tremendous amount of information about copyrights.  For the most part the government has increased copyright protections over time.  Most importantly though, is looking at how these laws influence historians.  And how copyright laws affect digital history.  While historians like everyone else, whether writing an article or creating a website, are responsible for following the law.  There are many ways in which historians can use materials without violating copyright laws.  In their chapter in Digital History, Cohen and Rosenzweig do an excellent job of explaining copyright laws and how the apply to historians.

I really liked Digital History’s discussion of fair use.  Cohen and Rosenzweig provide a number of thoughts on the issue of fair use, but at the end of the section they provide some excellent quotes on the importance of fair use.  I particularly liked the quote from the Chicago Manual of Style (last paragraph), “the right of fair use is valuable to scholarship, and it should not be allowed to decay because scholars fail to employ it boldly.”  I can definitely see their point about the importance of actually using fair use.  The more people exercise fair use, the more standardized it will become.  Thus, expanding the rights of users.  Therefore, it is important for all historians to take advantage of fair use, because doing so will aid future scholars and users.

Another interesting point that Cohen and Rosenzweig bring up is how copyright issues tend to be different for historians.  As historians, generally are not concerned with people stealing money from them, after all most academic historians are not dominating the New York Times bestseller list.  Rather they are concerned with others stealing their thoughts.  So after reading about authors and publishers being concerned about getting their fair share, we see a better side to copyrighting, the desire to just be recognized.  Which is why Cohen and Rosenzweig are rather carefree in their thoughts on copyrights and fair use.  Of course this brings up the issue of recognizing ideas as copyright and the debate between creativity being necessary to warrant copyright protection.

How much is protected under fair use?  While Cohen and Rosenzweig give numerous examples of what they see to be fair use, it is still interesting to think about, how much is too much?  I find it sort of comical.  Certainly there is a need for copyrighting.  At the same time, I do not have any problem with teachers providing copies of books, handouts, or even books on a website for students.  Which is why I think it’s great that Cohen and Rosenzweig followed through with their beliefs and placed their book online.  With the costs of higher education continuing to rise, the cost of text books just adds to list of financial burdens on students.  Yes, there are a lot of books that are fairly priced and of course you can find almost any book you need through the library.  However, course packs usually cost over fifty dollars and are just a collection of crudely copied articles or chapters.  How much does it cost to copy these materials?  Usually less than 10 dollars at your library copy machine, not that I would know.  Anyway, the point is while it is great to protect the rights of producers, the rights of users seems to be often forgotten.  While the materials in course packets should be copyright protected; that does not mean it is okay to exploit students.  Students must purchase course packets from the college bookstore, as they cannot be bought elsewhere.  This is just not fair.  If users must comply with fair use, shouldn’t publishers have to comply with fair price?

The website I chose was Wildcat Mountain in Pinkham Notch, NH.

What I liked about the design of the website.  It is very easy to move around and the main links panel is located on the top left of each page.  The Photo page has easy access to archived photos.  For the most part, if you selection one of the main links all the information is on one page.  So you just need to scroll down.

Some things I did not like about the website.  The bottom left of the main page is very congested, which makes it difficult to focus on.  After clicking on a link, half of the screen is filled with text and the other half (to the text’s right) is just filled by the background.  The merchandise page opens up a new window, which I personally do not usally like.  I had trouble finding the home link at first.  Usually I look at the bottom of the page, but it is located above the main links panel.  If it were in larger text it may be easy to spot.

For my semester project I still would like to build a website about the John Adams memorial.  I plan on building a website devoted to providing information about the memorial.  Therefore, my target audience will be the general public, but also those with interests in John Adams, Washington DC history, and national monuments.  I planned on doing some research for this project over break, unfortunately I was not able to do so.  So I need to do more research on the topic.  Of course the findings of my research will influence my argument.  However, I am thinking the overall argument of the website will be that there should be a monument to John Adams and to inform people of the status of the proposed monument.  So hopefully the website will help people become more aware of the proposed monument to the Adams family and possibly persuade them to support it.

The website will attempt to provide people with a variety of information on the topic.  I am thinking standard HTML would be the best way to build the site.  In terms of what the website might look like, I would probably divide it up into sections based on topic.  For example one section would be on the history of the proposed monument.  Also, I will probably have one page devoted to links to other websites about John Adams, as well as to websites with information on the proposed monument.  The rest of the website will be devoted to my research.   The government already has digitized Congressional records on the web.  Therefore, there is no need to digitize such information, but would I be able to put the actual records on my website or would I just need to provide access through hypertext?  I may include a section on the history of the Adams family and provide arguments as to why they are deserving of a memorial.  Finally, I will include a section on how people can help support the Adams Memorial.  Basically, how they can possibly get involved in making the monument a reality.

As I mentioned in my presentation last class, I have a personal interest in a monument to the Adams family.  Having grown up in Massachusetts and being exposed to so much of New England’s history, I believe there should be a monument to the Adams family in our nation’s capital.  It is hard not to have an interest in early American history when you grow up going to Boston’s historic sites and taking field trips to Lexington and Concord and Plymouth plantation.  I am not exactly certain what I want to do after graduate school, possibly work in an archive or maybe do something with education.  So I am not sure if this project fits in with any of my professional aspirations.  It is much more of a personal interest.

University and museum websites follow a clear set of professional standards. However, what about the “amateur” historian? Should they follow the same set of standards as professionals? Cohen and Rosenzweig discuss the standardization of the book and how the internet in its youth has not yet achieved universal standards. While they make many excellent points, such as the importance of site structure and to maximize the opportunities for people to find your site. I wonder if it is fair to compare the internet to print media. After all, while historians have embraced the book as their main medium, how responsible are they for the lay out of books? I would think publishers would be more responsible for the lay out of books than the historian? Although, I guess the most important thing is that historians have continued to use the book as their main way to communicate, thus endorsing the standardization of the book.

The other question I had was should we have standards for history on the internet? I would overwhelming say yes, but something also kept coming up in my mind as I read this chapter. The internet, its not a book, websites are supposed to be unique and unfettered. It seems that there is a very delicate balance between scholarly standards and the independence of websites.

Cohen and Rosenzweig made some really great points about accessability that I probably would not have thought of. The thing about the internet, is it is not face to face communication (well most of the time). For the most part all you see is the computer and whatever site you are looking at. I never would have thought about people with disabilities using computers, because that has never come across my mind while using a computer. In the real world accommodations for those with disabilities are highly visible (ie, handicap parking spaces). However, this is not the case on the internet. I thought that was great that they devoted a good part of this chapter to talking about how to make your website accessible for as many people as possible.

Does anyone have any suggestions why J-stor uses symbols and numbers for storing files rather than file names and directories that would make it much easier for the user to search through the site?

I was really impressed by Thomas Thurston’s use of frames his essay, Hearsay of the Sun.  The ability to click on a footnote and have the footnote appear to the right of the essay without moving to the bottom of the page is amazing.  Even better are the “anchor” tags, which pull up the actual transcribed source to the right of the essay, enabling the reader to look at the essay and the actual source at the same time.  I wonder why more historical websites do not use similar features?  Is special software required?  Is it time consuming?  I imagine including numerous “anchor” tags such as Thurston does can be very time consuming, as you have to create all the text you want to anchor.  Still, I would think framing and anchoring are so advantageous for historians they would be used more frequently.

Roy Rosenzweig in “Crashing the System?: Hypertext and Scholarship on American Culture”, brings up some good points about expectations and standards for online scholarly work.  It is well known that graduate students do not read every page of every book.  Yet Rosenzweig points to the “unwritten social contract” between readers and writers.  In regards to the discussion of graduate students knowing how to “read” books this is very similar to the William Turkel article we read earlier this semester.  Rosenzweig makes a great point when he asks how much do you need to read of online works to actually have “read” them?  As he points out in many online works the thesis can be difficult to locate.  He contends that as online scholarship progresses standards and expectations will decrease problems such as the social relationship between the writer and readers.  Will this mean a new “unwritten social contract” between readers and writers?  If so, will it follow the lines of the one already in place.  Or will it be unique to online works?

In thinking about this question, I thought back to my sociology classes in undergrad.  One of the great things about sociological essays is they provide an abstract.  As skimmed through the Journal of the Association for the History and Computing, I noticed some of the articles had abstracts and all the articles were divided into sections.  This organization made the articles easy to look through and get the main gist.  However, the way the articles are set up seems so regiment.  One of things I enjoy about online works do is get away from the regiment of standard scholarship.

Benjamin Hermalin in “Scholarly Journal Publishing in the 21st Century”makes some excellent arguments why online articles could and should surpass print as the main medium of the scholarly journal article.  Personally, most of the articles I read are online.  The main problem I have with this though is I do not like to read from the computer.  Starring at a computer screen reading journal articles  is not exactly the best thing for your eyes.  So I usually print out articles.  So is there any difference between printing an article online and going to the library pulling the journal from the stack and copying the article?  You are still left with a paper copy of the article, they may look a little different, but other than that they are the same.  Though I will concede printing them from a computer is much faster and you can do it from anywhere so long as you have access to the library’s online catalog.  My second issue is about computer use in general.  Computers for me at least tend to be very distracting and terrific for procrastinating.

I enjoyed the two articles on E-books and the future of print books.  I have never read an E-book so I do not have much to base my discussion on, other than some questions I had from the readings.  First, I want say that E-books sound like they are going to be a great tool for researchers.  David Bell though he worries about possible hyper-text searching over use in his article The Bookless Future: What the Internet is Doing to Scholarship, sees this as a great advantage for E-books.  The ability to type in a term or phrase and go to various corresponding pages would be an incredible advantage for researchers.  Bell also gives the excellent example of the history professor who soon left her position at the University of South Dakota, but left the school soon after due to a lack of library materials on her expertise.  However, he points out that with online books and resources of today and the future anyone around the world could have access to materials.  So it seems there are some great possibilities for the future of online books particularly for historians.

I do have a few concerns though.  What about libraries?  Clifford Lynch in , “The Battle to Define the Future of the Book in the Digital World”, discusses the future of E-books and libraries; however, I got the sense he was more concerned with university and research libraries, than public libraries. So what about public libraries and high school libraries?  What is their future?  If the feature is “bookless” as David Bell suggests, what does that mean for these libraries?  Many high school libraries lack necessary funding and are forced to work with what they have.  Perhaps online books will increase the amount of books, in particular newer books in high school libraries.  If libraries are able to purchase E-books cheaper than printed versions, then it would make sense that they would be able to purchase more books?  The only question would then will the school be able to provide enough computers.  Public town/city libraries; however, have a wide range of visitors; from young children to the elderly.  So they have to meet a number of different demands.  My main question though was about taking books out of the library.  Clifford Lynch discusses the use of E-book appliances as answer, but even this brings up many different issues.  I just do not see libraries getting away from the printed book.  If that is true can they afford to have a print copy and an online copy?

It seems that slowing down and thinking about what medium to use continues to be a major theme in the class.  Edward Tufte as well as Cohan and Rosenzweig emphasize a similar point: the importance of thinking about your projects audience and goals before you do anything.  Tufte argues that Power Point is not the best answer for professional projects, he believes professional handouts convey the entire picture much better.  While I think he makes some good points about the limits of Power Point, I think slide ware programs have the ability to add more to a presentation than Tufte gives them credit for.  With that said, I do agree with Tufte that bad Power Point presentations can ruin an otherwise good presentation.  However, a good Power Point or slide ware presentation can also greatly enhance a presentation.  For example, I thought the video on presentation Zen of Steve Jobs introducing the new Mac Mini was a great example of how to incorporate slide ware into a presentation.  The presentation includes Steve Jobs discussing the new product and has slides of the Mac Mini corresponding to where he is in his discussion.  Part way through, Jobs actually demonstrates some of the new features of the Mac Mini, such as Front Row.  Obviously, this presentation makes a great deal of sense given the subject. I wonder if part of the problem is that Power Point was created years ago and may just be obsolete? Computer technology has advance so much since Power Point was first created, but has Power Point evolved at the same rate?

Tufte tends to look at Power Point through a business perspective.  The same is true for many of the posting on the Tufte discussion thread, a lot of the discussion was based on businesses and also math and sciences.  However, what does Power Point do for historians?   What about students?

I think part of the issue is that every person learns in his/her own unique way.  Some people may actually benefit from receiving a handout before a lecture; others may not.  Personally, I like to take notes during class and do not like to be distracted by handouts.  Tufte makes a good point about distributing handouts before the lecture, as nothing is more distracting than handouts being passed around while someone is talking.  He wrote on his discussion thread on July 7, 2002, “…he best handouts are given out in advance of meeting. Why turn our students into stenographers recording our dictation? Instead let’s try something new in class: thinking.”  While I think this is an excellent idea, as I think some professors and teachers do too much reciting facts in class, especially in high school.  For example my freshman year high school Chemistry teacher put pre-written sheets on the overhead and just read off them all class.  Oh yes, it was 180 days of Chemistry bliss.  However, at the same time I wonder if Tufte’s statement fits in with history classes?

I do not think handouts are necessary or really work for history classes.  First, history students do plenty of reading outside the class and are expected to discuss in class.  Second, some people learn better by listening, processing, and then taking down their own notes.  While this process may lead to students misunderstanding concepts.  It can also increase students ability to comprehend the subject matter on their own terms and creates more than just one perspective.  What is the difference between regurgitating information on a piece of paper given to you and reciting information from a lecture you took notes on?  Also, this statement also greatly undervalues note taking as a skill.

Back to the article.  Perhaps it is a good idea to at least give the audience handouts when they walk in the room.  They can then choose to read the handouts or not.  I think it is important to keep the handouts simple and straight forward.  Sometimes handouts can be too difficult to follow along and when a lecturer refers to the handout one can get easily lost.  In regards to handouts before college classes, which was discussed on the Tufte discussion board.  While again I see the benefits of handing them out to every student, I personally would not benefit from say having a sheet of math proofs given to me.  In high school and undergrad I liked trying to figure out math and science problems on my own first.  I think giving students the solutions first takes away from the thought process.  Could you imagine if college history professors just gave out the key terms and concepts before every lecture?